Incheon: It was a mixed day for India at Asian Games where its athletes finished with one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. Boxer Mary Kom came out with flying colours by bagging the gold medal, while Tintu Lukka finished second in 800m to grab silver.
Not to forget the effort of the women's hockey team, who in their bronze play-off match defeated Japan 2-1 to win the medal. While, in athletics Annu Rani's efforts to clinch a bronze from Javelin throw was a surprising one. With Annu's bronze, India's tally jumped to 50 medals in total.
The day started for India on a positive note as Mary Kom became the first Indian woman boxer to clinch a gold medal in the Asian Games.
Five-time world champion and Olympic bronze-medallist Mary Kom was the undisputed star of the day as she beat Kazakhstan's Zhaina Shekerbekova 2-0 to improve on the bronze medal she won in the previous edition of the Games, where women boxers made their debut.
Mary Kom trailed her rival in the battle of two southpaws in the first round with three ringside judges being swayed towards her rival's way.
But an undeterred Mary stormed her way back by edging past her rival in round two and then dominated the Kazakh in the last two rounds after one of the judge's score tied the two at 38-38.
After the close first two rounds, Mary started landing good blows on her rival's face and even body. A solid right hook followed by a left in the third shook the Kazakh pugilist.
She got a unanimous verdict in the third round and kept her aggressive intent in the fourth to earn the verdict and the coveted gold.
In athletics, Luka clocked 1:59.19s to better the bronze medal she had won in this event in the previous edition of the Games in Guangzhou.
In other events, India endured mixed results.
A bronze medal was missed when Sandeep Kumar and Basant Bahadur Rana finished fourth and fifth respectively in the men's 50km race walk.
Sandeep was well below his best as he finished the race with a timing of 3:59:31s, well below his personal and season's best effort of 3:56:22s.
The other Indian in the fray, Rana, whose personal best timing is 3:56:48s, was even more disappointing as he clocked 4:07:06s en route to his fifth place finish.
India did not have the best of outings in the taekwondo competitions with Aarti Khakal and Rajan Pandia Anand crashing out in their respective events.
While Aarti lost 8-15 to Ganiya Alzak of Kazakhstan in the round of 32 encounter of women's 57kg category, Anand was shown the door by Yonghyun Park of Korea 1-7 in the round of 16 of the men's 80kg category.
The Indian women's basketball team finished sixth after losing the 5th-6th position classification match to Kazakhstan 47-68. Up against an in-form opposition, the Indians had no answer to Kazakhstan, who led from start to finish.
It turned out to be a disappointing outing for the Indians in canoeing and kayaking competitions as none of them could impress. Ganeshvri Dhurwe and Champa Mourya finished fifth and seventh in kayak single women repechage 1.
Ganeshvri clocked one minute and 28.03 seconds while Champa timed 29.39 seconds to bow out of the event. In volleyball, India fought hard before bowing out in the quarter-finals of the men's competition after losing 2-3 against fancied Japan.
The Indian women's sepaktakraw team finished at the bottom of Regu competition's Group A after losing its last preliminary match to China.
The Indian team went down 9-21, 7-21 in 26 minutes to bow out of the competition without managing to secure a single win.
(with PTI inputs)
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